News

Garden of Silver is launching the Pendant Project and you are invited to
join us and add some beautiful color to your life!

Garden of Silver designer, Eileen Baumeister McIntyre, constantly designs and creates new handmade, one of a kind, fused art glass pendants that are wrapped in sterling silver.

Normally we sell these pendants in large quantities to museum shops,
galleries and boutiques throughout the country. The ‘Garden of Silver Pendant Project’ allows us to offer these pendants to you at a great value. 

Here is a quick video of some of the one of a kind pendant designs.

Now that the crazy busy holiday season is over it was time yesterday to get some inspiration for the new year. My husband Thomas and I headed into NYC to spend the day at one of my favorite places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

I am planning on adding a little color to my jewelry with the new collection by enameling the silver through a variety of enameling techniques that I am currently experimenting with.

The botanical artwork in these gorgeous kimonos was breathtaking and the composition of flowers is perfect. They made me want to ditch my wardrobe and fill the closet with kimonos!

      
Here is a close up of Japanese fabric swatches along with stunning calligraphy.

   
Texture, shape and patina inspiration.

  
And, I am always fascinated with Koi fish. Our pond is too small for them. The dream is to create a huge pond on the property and fill it with Koi, lotus flowers, lily pads and frogs.  

Some breathtaking Tiffany stained glass masterpieces. And I couldn't resist a selfie with Tiffany!

    
Calder's mobile sparked some ideas as did this Jasper Johns encaustic painting.

  
I am always drawn to Japanese design elements. This Noguchi fountain will make you forget about all your stresses. So peaceful and calm. We have about five Asian lamps in the house, maybe time for a hanging one.

    
This detail of a marble sculpture also was incredible. If I can figure out how to get that texture in silver, that may be another new direction. 

It was so great getting recharged artistically by the extraordinary artworks at this world class museum. You really need a week, or more, to go through the museum because of its size and the amount art and artifacts that are there. We had total sensory overload after four hours! Loved it all, such a great day. I'm ready to sit down with my sketchbook and begin another new jewelry direction.

Today in the studio I have been working on some new jewelry that was inspired by the Hydrangea flowers in my garden and the Lily Pads in my pond.

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After making sketches of the flowers and lily pads I hand carve them out of wax and then cast the wax sculptures into solid sterling silver pieces. The silver castings need a lot of cleaning up and polishing, so I am currently covered in silver dust.

I decided to solder various arrangements of the Hydrangeas to resemble a natural looking cluster that you would see in the garden and the same with the lily pads. It's fun to come up with different ways to use each casting. These images below are the lily pads being soldered together with the torch and then a soak in the pickle which gets the pieces clean after soldering.

The various soldered arrangements will be made into earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets. And, the fun part...tiny blue diamonds are going to be added to the center of some of the Hydrangeas and tiny green diamonds will create a 'frog' on the lily pads! 

Another fun day in the studio.

Garden of Silver has just launched our first Kickstarter campaign, "Garden of Silver Grows".
We want to create jobs for young adults as they learn about entrepreneurship in a creative business. 

As a NYS Certified art teacher for the last 25 years, I have been privileged to work with some amazingly talented teenagers. I am dedicated to showing my creative teens how to be financially successful with their art and creativity. I feel that is extremely important for young creatives to learn the business side of the art world, as I was once faced with those same obstacles. I incorporate entrepreneurial skills into each of my high school class curriculums. Young creatives must learn the business skills required to market themselves and their art professionally in this competitive marketplace. I love tapping into the energy and talents of these young people and they always end up amazing me as we build upon great ideas together.

Kickstarter pledges will allow the expansion of Garden of Silver, while providing jobs for young adults. By working at Garden of Silver, young adults will learn marketing and advertising strategies, preparation of professional promotional materials, digital photography skills, product photography, Photoshop/computer graphics skills, blog writing, social media tactics, customer service, trade show booth design, jewelry display and presentation, working at a trade show, dealing with buyers, taking wholesale orders, and jewelry production techniques. They will learn everything that goes into working at a creative business.

These young adults will participate in the pre show preparation and real time business transactions in the international market place at the 2014 NY Now Gift Fair in New York City. This immersion in the market exchange will provide an invaluable opportunity for me to continue to teach, mentor and help to launch the next generation of creative entrepreneurs with real world experiences in one of the many careers in creative based business fields.

The way Kickstarter functions is that we have to reach our goal of $5000 in 30 days or, unfortunately, the project does not get funded. Trade shows are extremely expensive up front, before any orders are even written. This Kickstarter funding will allow Garden of Silver employ young adults immediately which will enable them to become better leaders, thinkers and future entrepreneurs so they may build upon their own boundless potential into new domains.

Thank you in advance for your support and sharing our story with your friends and family and for playing an integral role in helping to launch Garden of Silver to the next level and inspire young adults towards a creative future.

My husband and I just had all new carpeting installed over the weekend in our house. I was forced to get everything out of my studio, clean it all up, and put it back in order. Here are the results!    

Nice and clean and ready for the new spring Garden of Silver jewelry collections to be born!

I just spent the weekend in Brooklyn taking a 'Torch Fired Enamels' workshop at Liloeve which was fabulous!  Emilie Shapiro was the instructor of the class and she was amazing, extremely knowledgable and a great teacher. I have been looking to learn how to enamel for the last few years and was very excited to actually find a weekend workshop that I could squeeze into my crazy schedule.

Enameling is the art of coating metal with powdered glass which is fused together with heat. Normally this process takes place in a kiln, behind a closed door but, with the torch firing technique, the entire process is able to be seen.  

We learned how to use the acetylene torch to enamel copper pieces by firing the pieces on a trivet from below. You are able to pull the torch away at the exact moment that you like the finish of the enamel. Very exciting. I played a lot and experimented with all kinds of sample pieces over the two days. Lots of mistakes and disasters were made, along with some keepers! I plan on adding some color to my jewelry and hopefully by the summer I will have a new line to show.

And, I would like to thank my fabulous cousin Colleen for letting me crash at her Brooklyn apartment as well as giving this suburban girl her garage parking space and a delicious sushi dinner! A great weekend in Brooklyn.

Garden of Silver is here to make your holiday shopping a breeze! Here are some gift options for the jewelry lovers in your life:

Flower Child- Floating Flowers and Water Garden Collections

Yoga Lover-Zen Collection

Rock Star-Midnight in the Garden Collection

 Classy Lady-Spring Blooms and Summer Sunshine Collections

 Divas-Silver and Gold

Garden of Silver also has Gift Cards available if you can’t decide among all the gorgeous jewelry selections. They are available in increments of $10, $25, $50 and $100. And, one lucky Garden of Silver customer will automatically be entered to win a $500 Gift Certificate! The winner will be chosen on 12/23/13. Happy shopping!